James Tibbetts looked long and hopefully at the browned face of his young partner; but at what he saw there his hopes vanished.
"You're set on this, I see, Rog," he said sorrowfully.
"Cheer up, Jim!" responded Payne.
"I'll give you a deal that will help you get rich a lot quicker than if
I stayed with you."
Tibbetts shook his head and was silent a long time. "Well, if you're bound to sell, you won't go out of here exactly busted—after two years with me," he said at last. "Rog! Do you mean it? We're going to part?"
"It would be plain hell for me to stick, Jim."
Tibbetts grasped the extended hard brown hand in his own soft white fingers. After a while he managed to stammer:
"I see. This just had to come!"
II
On the fat rolling lands about Jordan City pedigreed kine graze by the hundreds, corn grows high and thick and silos are to be seen in every barnyard. And in Jordan City bank accounts are large and permanent.